Musings Report 2022-17 4-23-22 Walking Blindfolded to the Edge: "Do Something!"
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Walking Blindfolded to the Edge: "Do Something!"
How did our way of life become so burdened by the friction of complexity that it is no longer sustainable?
Last week I discussed The Ratchet Effect: organizations expand and become more complex but lack the means and will to shrink and become less complex.
I also mentioned the Sacred Cow Syndrome: every attempt to reduce complexity and cost runs into the buzzsaw of the highly motivated constituency that benefits from whatever was about to be cut.
Given the political headwind to trim anything, the focus shifts from aligning complexity to available resources to maintaining appearances that all is working as intended.
Meanwhile, behind this screen, things are unraveling.
There's another dynamic that constantly adds friction and cost to any system: the ever-present pressure to "do something."
Politicians are constantly urged to address various problems, and doing nothing draws criticism while passing new regulations and laws is praised.
No problem is ever presented as something that could be solved by reducing regulations and laws; the solution is always more complexity via more regulations and laws.
The implicit belief is that there will always be more money to pay for all this additional complexity. The existing pile of regulations and laws is considered the baseline: it never shrinks, it only expands.
Bureaucrats also face pressure to "do something" lest they appear to be lazy or resting on their laurels. And so they respond to trivial issues or devise "improvements" which end up costing a fortune while producing minimal real-world benefits.
Here are two examples:
Someone in the city's sprawling bureaucracy decided that bicyclists who breezed through stop signs on the city's bikeways were a hazard that demanded the police department "do something."
As a bicyclist living on a main bikeway--a street shared by bicycles and vehicles--I was also in the habit of ignoring stop signs when there were no vehicles or pedestrians in the intersection.
Coming to a dead stop every two blocks for no reason other than complying with signs designed for motor vehicles was obviously nonsensical.
But the traffic laws equated my 25-pound bicycle with a 2,500-pound vehicle, and by golly, bicyclists who ignored these stop signs were generating a public hazard.
An inquiry into the number of traffic accidents and deaths caused by bicyclists gliding through empty intersections turned up no data supporting the claimed hazard to public safety.
But laws can't be flouted under any conditions, and so the police department assigned its motorcycle officers to ticketing bicyclists who failed to come to a complete stop at empty intersections.
The motorcycle officers hid behind trees and parked cars so the unwary bicyclists wouldn't be alerted to the risk of being ticketed, then they would speed out and sound their siren to collar the offending bicyclist and deliver a $200+ "moving violation" ticket.
This so incensed me that I emailed the mayor and my local city council representative and demanded to know why scarce police resources were being devoted to ticketing bicyclists who were being prudent and safe in every way other than ignoring a visibly absurd regulation.
As I pointed out to the politicians, the city prided itself on promoting high-falutin' "climate change" goals of reducing carbon, while handing out $200+ tickets like candy to those using the one mode of transport that actually reduced carbon--bicycles.
That getting a $200+ ticket for essentially nothing other than a mindless obsession with a nonsensical regulation might be a disincentive to bicycling did not occur to the politicians or bureaucrats.
Was it all a revenue enhancement scheme? I didn't know, as such schemes are always kept well hidden, but I did know that the city's vaunted bikeways were terribly unsafe, poorly maintained and a complete joke.
This was one of the straws that broke this camel's back, as it revealed just how far down the rabbit-hole the city had gone.
In my estimation, if there was no hope left for any common sense, there was no hope for the city. So I moved.
"Do something!" inevitably ignores costs and cost-benefit analyses.
Here's another example. Building codes are constantly revised, with the stated intention of improving public safety by making buildings safer.
The boards of engineers and other parties convened to consider new codes and revisions are not tasked with conducting a cost-benefit analysis of whatever new requirements they recommend; cost doesn't count.
If cost is raised, it's quickly dismissed, for the new requirement "only adds a small sum to the total cost of the building."
Should the panel of experts recommend no new code requirements, they clearly failed in their duty: what is the meaning of your inaction, slackers?
And so new requirements that add little or nothing to public safety but do add costs to construction and renovation are piled on. year after year and decade after decade.
Eventually the cost and complexity becomes so burdensome that many people decide to skip the permit process and just do the renovation without official approval.
This defeats the entire purpose of the building codes and permit processes.
This pressure to "do something!" goes on behind the scenes in every nook and cranny of the status quo. There is rarely any dramatic change or consequence; it's like acidic water dripping on a foundation, eating away the reinforcing rods until the entire structure collapses.
This process is like sleepwalking: nobody questions the process or looks ahead to the eventual consequences.
And so the entire system has sleepwalked to the edge of the abyss of system failure, completely oblivious the coming collapse of all the mindless friction and complexity that's been piling up for decades.
The only real solution is to reverse all the perverse incentives to add friction and complexity so the system encourages reducing friction and complexity.
The system would have to be structured to make common-sense cost-benefit analyses the guiding principle rather than "do something" to justify one's authority, position and salary.
There is no way to reform this system other than collapse, i.e., the money runs out and there's nobody let to hand out tickets to bicyclists ignoring the stop signs in empty intersections. . It seems the early stages are upon us.
Highlights of the Blog
Staring Into the Abyss 4/22/22
What's Your Plan A, B and C? 4/20/22
A Couple of Thoughts on Big Numbers 4/18/22
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
First flower on our young yellow Ohia Lehua (a native tree) and our first (tiny) avocado on our two-year old Kahalu'u avocado tree.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
The vision collector: the man who used dreams and premonitions to predict the future
Red Dusk: Xi Jinping’s China faces challenges of its own. -- demographics and inequality are destiny...
"Grow a Garden"?! Most Americans Can't Keep a House Plant Alive-- it's not easy to grow food....
Beatle v mobster: the day John Lennon put paid to a shady record label boss -- a rare win for musicians...
The Metaverse Isn’t Real Yet but It’s Already Really Lucrative-- for those selling to chumps....
From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out -- good summary of the global changing of the tides between labor and capital....
Economies face ‘long COVID’ threat as data shows rates surging
Doctor urges people to take note of new scientific research on how Covid-19 affects major organs
"Nice Narrative" But No: Why One Strategist Thinks Zoltan Pozsar's "Bretton Woods 3" Is Never Going To Happen -- important essay on currencies... worth a careful read...
"Are We Living In A Dream World?"
Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
Why nuclear power will never supply the world's energy needs -- we only need to build 14,000 new reactors, and soon...
"Genius is the recovery of childhood at will." Arthur Rimbaud
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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